GOTM75 Final Spoiler

[jesusin]

GOTM75 Final Spoiler

So how did your game after 1AD go? Tell everyone and discuss in this thread, subject to...

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What have you learned this game?

 

[Greeder]

Conquest 1435 AD, score 114k.

Putting mountains between two halves of continent was tricky jesusin.
Of course date and score will be beaten by masters, but it is following decent game, after last BOTM, so I'm satisfied. And it's just my second Vanilla game. I forgot about Calendar cancelling Stonehenge, ech...
Camel Archers rulez! I'll write detailed report somewhen else.

AD milestones:
50-150 AD, another Mao's Worker is mine
140 AD MC
180 AD lost Mids by one turn to unknown civ. Much later Peter pad for it bitter price.
190 AD Calendar. What a suprise, my Stonehenge doesn't work any more...
230 AD Elizabeth is declaring on Mao.
290 AD She is inviting me to jion the war. I wasn't ready, but my army was in the process of building, so why not.
350 AD Shanghai captured (jumbos and gems). The same turn Mao bribed Toku to DoW Elizabeth.
400 AD Mao and Elizabeth made peace.
430 Ghandi constructed GLight. It stirred my interest
460 AD Machinery.
588 AD Two more Chineese cities captured. I have no intetion of continuing war at this point, as rest of Mao's cities are far south on peninsula and my economy is stretched.
664 AD Guilds. It convinced Mao to sue for peace.
652 AD GLib in capitol.
756 AD Declared on Ghandi and captured his border city. I sent stack of CA+some cats to capture holy Jewish city.
845 AD Ghandi is dead. I have 4 new cities, one razed. GLight and Temple of Solomon are magical cure for my economy.
So I have now experienced army of CA and my neghbors didin't discovered Feudalism yet. Well...
910 AD I attacked Elizabeth.
1045 AD 5 new cities, 2 more razed. Elizabeth is reduced to one poor city on Chineese peninsula. London is awesome with all this seafood.
I have Engineering, Philo and I'm almost ready to go for Lib. Detour for Optics as I feel that rest of AI's are on different continent. Contact with Huayna, but I didn't bother to actually see how his and Cyrrus border looks like.
1090 AD Time to finish Mao.
1135 AD Mao is reduced to one island city. I have not even single Galleon, so I let him live for a moment. I captured only one coastal city, razed 4 other. Time for Elizabeth and Toku to die.
1160 AD Elizabeth is dead.
1235 AD Toku is dead. Captured 2 cities, including his juicy capitol, razed 5. The same turn I finished Mao off.
1255 AD declared on Cyrrus.
1280 AD +1 move bonus from circum.
1284 AD Nationalism
1294 AD peace with Cyrrus. He has Longbows, so he is not easy meat and I'm forced to use slow cats extensively. And I'm out of them.
1320 AD OK, I have new cats.
1346 AD Liberalism and Astro from it, as I finnally take notion of moutains between me and Buddist block.
1352 AD Cyrrus is reduced to one island city. 5 cities captured, 4? razed. Angkor Wat and Colossus.
1360 AD From BB (Buddist block) I have chosen Peter to die first, as only he has not discovered Feudalism.
1374 AD Gunpowder and Taj Mahal. I went for Banking->Economy for GM and second Golden Age.
1394 AD Captured Moscow with Mids. I scouted Huayna's and Fred's lands. Huanya started to suspect something and cut off open bordes. Pity as I found German city at northern outskirts of continent ideal for opening second front againtst Huanya. I converted to Buddism and gave him some beads to befriend the guy. Oh, and he settled city on my coninent, it flipped and I gave him it back.
1400 AD MT
1402 AD Peter is dead. Huanya is happy enough with me, so I can send stack of experienced Cavs to this German city I mentioned before.
1411 AD Time for Incan civ to became part of history.
1415 AD Persian civ is history, my Galleon finally encircled continent.
1421 AD Incan civ is history.
1423 AD Fred is crying for mercy.
1435 AD No mercy.

Things I learned:
Calendar is cancelling Stonehenge in Vanilla. (well this one I learned again. Third time...)
Pay attention to the map. If I bother to look at the map I could plan my invasion on BB much earlier instead of ad hoc.
Captured Workers are excellent for fog busting empty continents.

 

[kcd_swede]

Settled in place after exploring a little, on turn 2 I think.

Built 3 or four cities. CS-sling. Took over India, then Japan, then half of Inca, then Persia, then all but one of Mao's cities. At the end I started taking cities from Peter, not too many because I want Fredrick not to be #2 pop. Then win diplo victory in 1492.

I'm pretty pleased with that date, being earlier than I usually do, but suspect that with Marathon speed others will beat this easily.

In fact, I'm almost sure of it, since I didn't decide on my VC until I was starting on Physics. Figured it would be the quickest "real-time" victory I could do from there. Had originally been aiming for space, mostly. But its much the samer up to Physics anyhow, so no big deal. Would have taken different tech from liberalism, though.

Fun game, nice with Marathon for a change, but it does make the game so much easier that I'd have preferred it at a level where things get tougher... like Immortal or Deity. At Prince it just slows things down.

Come to think of it, I think space or UN victories would be faster taking the challenger save on this one. So I think I put myself at a handicap with my VC choice. Dom would have just taken too long, though. Cavs made the conquests I did do short and sweet. But others will likely run the board with knights or something, so better chance with a competitive diplo vc, anyhow.

 

[neilmeister]

First spoiler here.

So, Mao & Gandhi are dead, time to turn to Tokugawa.
He succumbs to the Cataphant express in 280ad.
Cyrus goes in 572ad, he had a lot more troops than I expected, and the front had no reinforcements for a long time as I was building several new SoD's to take out Elizabeth.
Elizabeth is eliminated in 760ad.
HC is DoWed, but the unthinkable happens, I am fast running out of cash (-300gpt) and I can't ferry the troops to HC fast enough to bring in enough conquest gold. After capturing 3 of HC's cities, I accept peace the turn after the strike starts.

Pre-positioned settlers are settled and are running caste artists. But, oh noooooes, I am 20 tiles short. I gamble everything and DoW Peter in 870ad to capture a ex-barb city in the middle of my Incan cities. I lose half my diminished SoD in strike before I even attack, but I do manage to take it, with 2 unts left. All of my Incan cities are defenseless, and Peter accepts peace on the first turn he will talk. I was expecting to have to give him techs, but he gave me cash!

So, for the nest 300 years!!!!! I am 1 tile short, any settlers I built are disbanded the next turn.

Spoiler :

One of my border cities finally pops its borders in 1190ad. 320 years after I captured my last city.

Great game Jesusin, though I now fully understand that I can't stand marathon.

 

[billybgame]

See all the warmongerers had better games by far than those of us who tried peaceful sorts....1774 Cultural win.

I'll take it. It wasn't too easy. Once we started to really push for Culture, and fall behind in techs, they started coming for our throat. Toku, naturally, but he wasn't too much a pain. But, then Peter, with waves and waves of Cossacks! Ugh. I managed to fend him off repeatedly, even once losing Damascus, one of my 3 culture cities. That hurt pretty bad in my year of win. Might not have lost the city, but it was the old vanilla not telling me "the enemy is near Damascus". I didn't see the pile of troops until they attacked, or would have thinned them out a lot with cannons and catapults.

Then Mao declared and I really started to worry......but I fought off cavalry and another wave of Cossacks. I could see the win in my sights, when I spotted yet another massive fleet of Russian troops just off shore. With artillery! I gave up Baghdad for peace. Seemed like a small price to pay. Soon even Mao signed off on peace. And, Cyrus signed a defensive pact, that he offered! I was feeling quite at ease. And, coasted home.

It wasn't the easiest culture win setup, so I'll take it on Prince.

 

[Falabello]

After 1 AD:

- DOWed on Togukawa (572 AD) with Cats, Chariots and Horse Archers, and he was killed (724 AD)
- I declared against Gandhi (995 AD) and he died (1085 AD)
- Next was Elizabeth (1276 AD) that was conquered (1364 AD)
- DOWed on Cyrus (1410 AD). Only one island city was leaving , and after producing a Galleon it was also dominated (1428 AD)
- At this time, almost all the western side belonged to Arabian Empire, with the exception of a single German town. My world population was 51,77% and land area 40,78% . The idea, henceforth, was to get the maximum of culture to achieve the target of 60% of land area, but it only reached 50% . Thus there is no other way but to go to war again…
- After producing some Galleons to cross my army to the east side, I declared war against Huayna Capac (1514 AD). We made peace (1535 AD) after the conquest of all cities of the continent. At that point I had 56% of land area and was only wait a few more turns to the expected victory…

- Only a few Great People (I think there were 4) appeared during this game, that ended with an Arab Empire consisting of 48 cities. When it finally appeared the whole map, after the victory, I could see the small continent to the east, with three small towns of the Inca Empire. This land was ruled by the barbarians, and it was the first time that I saw a Barbarian State!

 

[damnrunner]

1596 culture win. Could have done a 1550s or even late 1400s if I was more focused.

Went for a different cultural tactic than normal which I have wanted to try with a low difficulty Saladin game for a while now. My thinking was I could use mids to switch between Democracy and Representation which would allow me to continue to tech with GP farms (under rep they generate decent beakers) and under democracy I could rush cathedrals in my GP farms. I built two GP farms and late converted my capitol to a GP farm once I had a sustainable cottage economy in my other cities.

The key to the strategy was to grab Mids, and Parthenon, and Sistine Chapel early on to max out effectiveness of GP farms as culture cities. At this difficulty level grabbing all of these was pretty easy. Had 3-4 engineers from the mids (and HG) which were useful in rushing these wonders and some other wonders)

I ran 0% gold/cult most of the game to bring in $ to upgrade my GP farms. Also used a good amount of war mongering to bring in extra revenue (as well as capture some needed religions). By the end of game I had every religion's cathedral in each of my 3 culture cities (except for one). At this point 2 cities were around 700cult per turn (capitol and hermitage/NE city) and the 3rd was in the 500s (several BC wonders in my capitol made it a cultural beast).

I attacked China early on to grab some cities they planted in the lush jungle to the south. Took 3 cities which became a GP farm and 2 powerful cottage cities. In the mid game I attacked India to grab Buddhism and their +20gpt something shrine. Also in mid game I attacked Persia and China several more times just to pillage and raze cities for $. In late game I attacked the English for confu/taoism.

I was able to maintain excellent relations with Japan and the Incas throughout the game due to shared religion which was helpful. Russia and Germany were also fairly friendly. The fact I had a decent military also kept people friendly I suppose.

It was a grind of a game but being able to rush buy things with gold was very nice.

I had odd GP luck - all GEs (around 4) and GAs (13ish). This was way more engineers than I should have gotten which was useful for rushing wonders early on - but later in the game GAs would have been more useful (I blew a late GE on West Point as there was nothing else to use it on). A GP or GS at some point could have been useful and although I did not focus on these, statistically I should have had one.

Things I did wrong:
-I should have conquered the English cities way earlier. They had marble which would have made rushing some of the cathedrals far cheaper. Also I delayed getting confu/taoism far too long. My concern at the time was that they had a decently powerful army, but I could have taken them rather than harassing China/Persia in the midgame.

-Missed the liberalism free tech. I was overconfident and the AI would not beat me too it. I was hoping to get MilTrad as my free tech from it which I could have traded around for a ton of $ and other technologies (and to build cavalry to raze cities for more $$). Just was not thinking here. Its always ideal to get liberalism asap in culture games regardless of what free tech you are able to snag.

-I messed up some math in the end game and had an extra Great Artist when I won.

-Micro managing can always be better. Better timing switching back and forth between Democracy and Representation could have resulted in having a faster tech rate. I was about 10 turns from biology when I won the game, but with more focus this could have come far earlier. With my botched liberalism free tech I had to go back and research several lower order tech on my own and ended up decently behind the AI. If I had kept up I could have b-lined to Bio and traded back for other techs I needed.

 

[donsig]

Domination in 1783 AD (or thereabouts). I'm not all that fast at war but this was a good time for me. I get too distracted erecting buildings in my cities.

 

[-Asterix-]

Tough luck neilmeister, feel sorry for you.

My game ended with lousy domination in 1085AD. Longbow-rush doesn't seem to be the most efficient way to go here... After 1AD I got catapults to aid my advanced archers and kept rolling over AIs with them. Also kept tech up with repre+caste and got up to Chemistry until I noticed that I'd have land for domination limit about 10 turns sooner than I could take Bio from Liberalism. Decided to go for faster finish as I just wanted the game to end. Marathons really aren't for me...

 

[DizzKneeLand33]

Diplomatic victory in 1668 AD (score 37276).

I took over almost all of the western side of the continent in the end (leaving Persia with a few cities and "pleased"). Mao wiped out England and knocked Ghandi off the continent, so my wars were against Japan (early) and China (later).

Strangely, Japan had one city left when I went to war with China, Nanjing. Japan and China had NEVER been to war to my knowledge, so I actually saw in the game replay that Barbarians had taken over the city, and then Japan liberated it, millions of miles away from the rest of their lands....

Ironically, I think this is one of my first diplomatic victories EVER in Civ IV (in hundreds and hundreds of games). I don't recall seeing that particularly boring victory screen at least....

 

[Conquistador 63]

What have you learned this game?

I learned that marathon games don't have to take longer real-time wise to complete.
At least I finished mine in about 15h, not longer than my average XOTM games.

As I mentioned in the 1st spoiler thread, I went for culture. Took out Gandhi and Liz and expanded to 10 cities.

I got 5 religions (2 from conquered cities), and built the complete set of cathedrals in the legendary cities.

Legendaries were capital, Medina to the south and Delhi. London was a non-legendary GP farm, gave me 7 out of 16 GArtists. I bombed them 3-5-8 at the end.

Only non-GA were 2 early prophets (shrine + settled in capital) and the GM from Economics.

The shrine helped to spread my hindu religion to all the civs - it was a 100% hindu brotherhood until near the end when some went FreeRel. Even Toku - who I declared war on earlier, was pleased with me. No war worries, I kept minimal military forces.

Took Nat from Lib in 788AD and shut down research, but with Rep specs I was able to learn stuff like PP and Banking/Econ (for Merc civic and the free GM which gave me 5100g from trade mission).

My cities went legendary between t553 and t560 - 1410AD finish.

Thanks for the game, jesusin!

 

[Ronnie1]

Nice game C63!

You got me by about 100 years I think, some where mid 1500's for me.

I may have been closer but Cyrus declared on me somewhere around 1200AD with Cavalry against my Camels and I had to scramble up some defenses, and then I got a bit paranoid and probably wasted a few more turns here and there because I actually turned research back on if I remember right.

 

[bajadulce]

Unfortunately I have some game settings/installation files botched on my computer so have to resolve these before turning in games.

Until then, just wanted to say that I had a fun time with the map and thnx for putting this together. I am learning a lot from playing these community games and appreciate all the energy that goes into running these.

The Marathon setting is a bit more time consuming that's for sure, but it definitely seems easier as even the smallest tech advantage can be exploited before the AI can "catch up". With normal speed games, that small tech advantage sometimes vanishes by the time you train a few units and march across the battlefield. Producing lower tier level units just isn't worth the effort if they only are effective in a small window of turns. With Marathon, any unit that has an advantage over any other unit is going to have that advantage for a much longer time.

 

[Htadus]

I made a complete muck of this game. By 300 AD I had killed off Japan, Persia and the chinese with cats and Phants. The bad part was that I kept way toomany cities and I was bleeding 100+- gpt.

By 500 AD I was fighting india and England. By 600AD, On the other end I am about to DOW HC. With a a stack of about 10 units and my galley's got disbanded.

Less than a day left to finish. So I will submit a incomplete. I see why people say Marathon was easy on war games. Only Germans have Manarchy and others have no chance of ever getting LB with 3 star elephants and CR3 cats approaching there cities. Thanks for the Marathon game but lets not do that for another 5 years.

If I had planned properly and got rid of many crappy cities, this game would have been more tolarable. Aslo playing better would help too.